Anime Fanservice

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Warning! Some oversensitive readers may find this post naughty.

Since you geeks repsond more to ANIME TALK than POLITICS here’s another anime rant. Sorta. Oh fanservice, where would anime be without it? Well, it’d probably be alot better actually. What is fanservice you ask? You know: a flash of white panties, girls tripping and landing on boys (sometimes other girls) in provocative positions, maybe a boob or two, and fanboys eat this up despite the fact there’s a whole industry of hardcore anime tentacle porn out there they could be fapping to.

And where basement dwelling otaku with shelves full of x-rated statuettes may like fanservice, I for one have trouble taking any show with an abundance of it very seriously (unless it’s an outrageously silly and genuinely funny comedy, then I let it slide. I still love you Maho Tsukai Tai and Project A-ko!) Like most people, for example, I was told for years that Neon Genesis Evangelion was TEH BEST ANIME EVARZ. I had seen the first two episodes years before and it bored me to death, but when it finally aired on Adult Swim I decided to finally watch it all. For an anime that was supposed to be top-quality, philosophical, religiously controversial, a paradigm of creative and symbolically deep anime… it sure had alot of stupid, mindless fanservice. The second I saw a scene in which a 14 year old girl’s skirt is blown unnaturally up above her navel so that she flashes a group of teenaged boys I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this anime (the first 14 or 15 episodes were all goofy as fuck too. Jesus! .. okay Eva is a rant for another day.) It even PROMISED FANSERVICE in each preview for the next episode! I’ll venture to guess the 14 year old girls in skin-tight bodysuits is the only thing that’s kept that series popular for 11 years.

So by now you might be wondering: what on Earth has gotten Sai on this rant? Well read on (unless you don’t want your parents to see you looking at pantyshot pics.)

If you knew you were going to be
fighting this much wouldn’t you wear
some fucking pants?

Some time ago I came across a website called anime-fanservice.org. Now before you get any funny ideas, I didn’t find it on purpose. I was just trying to prove to someone that Love Hina does, in fact, have a shitload of fanservice in it, a point I was having trouble believing they were confused about.

So I stumbled across this site in my Google searches and was both amused and saddened at the same time. But the proliferation of fanservice-worship isn’t the reason I ended up getting a ticked off by this site (well, maybe a little.) As I was glancing over the anime titles for which they had screenshots I saw the expected ones, like Agent Aika (link NSFW!), which is an OVA I had the misfortune of being made to watch. I kept asking my friend "are you sure this isn’t a hentai?" after seeing pantyshots literally every five seconds, and then asked it again much more nervously when a guy who obviously cared a little too much about his sister sensually helped her into some "battle" panties that shot tentacles. In the end I amused myself by gibbering nonsense in a thick, stereotypical Indian accent every time this one guy came on screen, often opening with "I am the pool boy! Why am I here!?" Good times. However, Angent Aika left me baffled as to why they didn’t just make it a porno in the first place, because it was completely pointless otherwise. But I’ve gone off on a tangent now…

So then I started seeing some of my favorite series on this site; series I would not say are known for fanservice. The first and foremost being Paranoia Agent. Naturally I was puzzled. Fanservice? In my Paranoia Agent? Where? So I clicked to see the images and discovered the operators of anime-fanservice.org seem to think any instance of nudity or people in their underwear is "fanservice": regardless of the context. Take this for example:

Yowza! A teenaged girl getting undressed! Look! You can almost see her boob! That’s got to be hot and steamy fanservice, amirite? Sure, until you remember this is from a scene in which that 16 year old girl finds these stills of herself undressing… on her father’s computer. Her father who is leading a double life that involves making hookers call him "daddy". And she subsequently tears apart her bedroom and finds the camera her father had secretly installed when the family’s dream house was built. Hmm. Not so sexy now, is it?

But that’s not the only places they really stretch to call something fanservice. The Sailor Moon "fanservice" is stretched more than a fuckin’ Stretch Armstrong:

Wow, I didn’t know there were any up-skirt shots in Sailor Moon at all (it generally follows the "magic skirt" rule that you can never see up it no matter how much it defies physics), and even these ogglers of 14 year old Japanese animated ass were hard pressed to find them. Of course, I don’t think this counts as a "panty shot" considering the Senshi’s outfits are more like a leotard or a bathing suit with a skirt attached. Also, yeah, the expression on Minako’s face is so hot…

Unfortunately these guys are also too busy slapping their meat to tell the difference between tasteful nudity and shameless fanservice. IT ONLY COUNTS IF YOU SEE A NIPPLE!

Now it’s a given that some people’s definition of fanservice is pretty broad. In some views anything unnecessary to the plot that pleases or panders to the fans, or gives the fans what they want (making two characters kiss, giving two guys gay undertones, showing characters in bathing suits or other cute costumes etc.) is fanservice. But the operators of anime-fanservice.org, by the sounds of their own manifesto, are using it to mean pantyshots and tits. And obviously the context or rendering doesn’t matter, they’d probably fap to it even if it was a dead hooker on the side of the road.

Well. Close enough.